Mongoose’s latest series of eBooks for their
Traveller line has finally advanced to the venerable Type R
Merchant, lovingly nicknamed the ‘Fat Trader’. The booklet follows the
same pattern as its’ predecessors in the semi-detailed ship series—the
first part of the book provides some background/source material,
followed by a section holding operational information, with the final
section being about the ship itself and some sample ship background
material.

There are some additional items that Mongoose has stayed true to for
their ship booklet series—the low price of $2.99 for the supplement, the
lifting of nearly all illustrations from the core rule book, and the
same semi-res (not sure if it’s low, and it’s definitely not high) 3D
deck plan layout.

A few new concepts/background material on freight handling are
introduced in this supplement. First, there is talk of ‘specialist
loading cradles’ for ships that can auto-unload a ship: “many ships can
be turned around in little more time than they take to get in and out of
the cradle.” There’s additional mention of an overhead crane/gantry
system to move cargo containers around inside the ship, “handlerbots”
(prevalent at class C ports), and then having to use the slower internal
crane at D and E ports. An assumption is that a “handlerbot” is a grav-capable
piece of equipment, and it’s already stated that it’s a fully-automated
piece of equipment. There is mention of cargo tie-downs for containers
(1-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 50-, and 100-ton sized) and other cargo. Similar to
the ‘mule’ from the TV series Firefly is
mention of a small cargo mover that some ships purchase (Cr75,000) that
also has the ability to move the container. The description listed later
on indicates that this cargo vehicle is also called a handlerbot. It
would have been nice to see more clarity in the discussion of the
handlerbot as it relates to moving cargo and its uses. There’s nearly
half a page background on containers in the book talking about various
features and functionality. It’s not super-detailed, but it’s all
interesting.

One page is dedicated to the concept of speculative trade, obviously
an appropriate topic since we are talking about a trader-class ship
here. The information is presented in paragraph-length sections, jumping
from topic to topic, with no concept going much more than a paragraph.
Most of it is pretty well known or discussed elsewhere (buy low, sell
high, speculative trade, selling illegal goods, etc.).

After the section on trade there’s about two and a half pages going
into more detail about the workings of the ship and the cargo holds,
operational information nuggets, variations on the normal configuration
(such as tankers) and a couple of paragraphs on converting the cargo
hold to carry more passengers or for specialized missions (for example,
turning the ship into a makeshift laboratory vessel for science
missions). It’s stated that some ships travel with holds depressurized
to reduce the load on the ship’s environment systems. The problem with
this item is that, in theory at least, there should be little to no load
on the systems if nobody is going in/out of the bay. It does make more
sense to keep them depressurized for security—except that means the
containers and such are travelling in a vacuum (and unheated one at
that) and we have absolutely no data on how well the containers can
handle that environment for long periods.

For those that have followed the Type-R trader over the years, you’ll
appreciate this little nugget—the location of the mysterious third
hardpoint has been finally revealed! According to the explanation given,
the two hardpoints (port and starboard) can take energy-based weapons
but not any sort of weapon that requires ammunition, as the standard
designs have no provision for magazines. The only problem with this
explanation is that the third hardpoint is located exactly where the
launch is carried. Which begs the question: if that is the case, is
there really a hardpoint there? This is the first example I have heard
of where an empty hardpoint is also used as an airlock/external craft
docking clamp. There’s nothing in the rules to preclude doing this, but
it’s the first time I’ve heard of it.

There’s also some interesting verbiage regarding ammunition as a
whole. Classic Traveller missed the boat
when it came to talking about the actual workings of the missile
launcher. Just how many missiles at ready did a turret carry? Was it
just one in the pipe? Or could you also store additional ones below in
the hardpoint tonnage? This question has vexed many a player and also
has generated a lot of commentary over the various versions, including
Mongoose’s. Dougherty states clearly that reloading is rather rare for
most ships; a typical missile launcher carried one in launch position
and two more ready to be auto loaded, which is plenty. So the answer to
the perennial question, how many missiles are carried on-mount, is
canonically answered: three. The only other question raised here is the
“two more ready to be auto loaded”. Which, in my mind at least, means
they aren’t set up in a feed system. Of course, one could argue that
since there is no adjacent magazine then of course they’d have to be
manually loaded (from the two at ready in the hardpoint). I guess it
would get rather crowded in there with a triple missile launcher in the
turret and six missiles awaiting loading. Based on what I’ve read over
the years trying to explain the gaps in the missile systems, I suspect
that Dougherty decided what he thought worked well and went with that.
It’s certainly not unheard of by authors, and in his defense, missile
technology explanations don’t belong in a booklet that focuses on a
400-ton trader. But at some point Mongoose is going to have to go
through and straighten out all of their canonical explanations so they
all fit together properly—or at least that’s hoped for.

There’s a short section on having players using the Type-R as their
preferred means of campaign transport, but it’s only about 1/3rd of a
page in length and it’s really not that useful of information to most
players (too much success hauling cargo can ruin the referee’s continual
attempt to reduce the amount of credits they have earned). There’s talk
of giving them a ‘very old’ ship that requires more maintenance work
(and costs)—except the rules really don’t differentiate new from old as
far as your maintenance costs go.

The last three sections are about operational costs, the 3D deck plan
layout and explanation of the various ships environments, and three
sample ship descriptions. It’s nice that some of the numbers have been
broken out for you and how much it costs for x, while you can expect to
make y in return. Though some of the included numbers aren’t very useful
(we all know that refined fuel costs Cr500 and unrefined fuel is Cr100
at a starport). In the description of the low berths it’s mentioned that
the technology is pretty standard and freezing/revival is done by
whoever has some medical training. And basically if you have
complications or die, well, you shouldn’t have been cheap and travelled
in a low berth.

I’ve complained before about the quality of the graphics and I plan
on complaining again. The graphics are simply of terrible quality. While
the 3D version is useful, zooming in using a PDF reader just blurs
things too much. The included artwork is recycled low-res imagery from
the core rulebook, and crammed onto the same page as the 3D deck plan is
the one from the book. Though on this one “section 9. Engenering” is a
typo that made it through editing.

With the other systems, like the cargo deck, getting additional
information and detail, why didn’t the escape capsules get something
similar? They are woefully ill explained and many ship designs don’t
even include them. In the very first paragraph we get ‘The ship has one
20-ton launch and a full set of escape pods.’ And then… nothing. The
design actually puts a pair of escape pods on the lower deck near
engineering and escape pods in both port/starboard areas. They even have
dedicated escape pods in the crew-only section! Kind of what you’d
expect from emergency equipment, but one would also (hopefully) expect
more descriptions and/or discussions on their operation.

Overall I think that Mongoose is heading in the right direction with
these supplements, but they consistently seem to miss the mark on some
of the little things. While they are pretty inexpensive at $2.99 ea.
(for the ships at least), trying to cram all four deck plan
illustrations on a single page makes no sense because there isn’t a
restriction on length. These are being published as eBooks, and thus
adding in half a dozen more pages to allow for more detailed
explanations or even spreading the artwork out so that each image has
its own page should add zero cost to the product. And even if there were
some sort of restriction one could easily drop the two pages of filler
illustrations that really do nothing for the book as a whole.

For the price, it’s definitely worth adding to your collection. With
just a little more effort and thought they could easily put out a much
better product at the same price point or slightly higher. Time and
again I have said that most gamers are willing to spend money for better
production quality, better art, better everything. I am assuming the
next ship supplement we will see is going to be the subsidized liner. I
have high expectations, but sadly not much hope that they will pay
attention to the feedback that consumers are giving them to better their
products.